[FM Discuss] license thread

Mon Sep 3 04:45:40 PDT 2007

sophea suggested putting all material into the Public Domain...any
thoughts on that?

adam

On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 11:45 +0200, Julian Oliver wrote:
> ..on or around Thu, Aug 09, 2007 at 11:07:35AM +0200, adam hyde said:
> > how about licensing with :
> > 
> > "You may use this material with any CC or FSF license provided you
> > permit FLOSS Manuals to use any modified or derivative work."
> > 
> > would that solve it?
> 
> some of the CC licenses (esp if you use the word 'any') might present the 
> downstream problem of the work being re-licensed in a way that doesn't favour 
> FLOSSManuals later. while you can say "provided you permit [..]" this doesn't
> afford any protection in the event of legal bridges between licenses in
> future - there are always loopholes.
> 
> i wouldn't be afraid to be staunch on this matter and operate under
> single license terms. you can always back it up with a page explaining why 
> 'keeping it Free with a capital F' is important, in the sense of the 
> heritage and health of these manuals.
> 
> your only immediate concern is that you may lose the odd contribution 
> on the basis the GPL or GFDL doesn't suit people. perhaps it'd be good to
> hear from someone as to why and in what cases the GPL wouldn't fit their
> needs.
> 
> it is true that the GPL (or GFDL) simply may not be the best license overall. 
> while i've used it with my own code for several years i've never applied
> it to documentation and so i would look to other projects that have used it 
> before putting all your bits in one basket.
> 
> that said, while the CC licenses are great and all (i use them for 
> images/music), they haven't yet had their day in court (eg functioned as 
> contested legal figures). moreso Lessig is stepping back from Creative 
> Commons to focus on other things: it's possible the CC can not be relied 
> on to adapt to changing conditions both technological and legal in time.
> 
> ultimately the question of licensing will return to the broader vision
> of FLOSSManuals. if you can accomodate the idea of re-licensing and it's
> complex symptoms then you might as well open up the licensable terms for 
> contributed manuals widely and take it as it comes.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> julian
> 
> -- 
> http://julianoliver.com
> http://selectparks.net
> emails containing HTML will not be read.
> 
> > 
> > adam
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 00:05 -0700, Delirium wrote:
> > > adam hyde wrote:
> > > > My proposal then, is that we use the flexibility we have, as the
> > > > copyright owners to allow anyone to use the content under any CC or FSF
> > > > license. This means it can be used under the GPL (which is good for
> > > > developers), the FDL (which means it is good for wikipedia etc), the CC
> > > > licenses (which means it is is good for use by bloggers, on websites
> > > > etc).
> > > >
> > > > This would be something like a license (eg .TRFL - 'the really free
> > > > license' ;). 
> > > >
> > > > So the content would be covered with something like:
> > > > "(c) [author] you may use this material with any CC or FSF license"
> > > >
> > > > I can visualise some kind of image that could be placed on each page, -
> > > > somehting like the Creative Commons images, with a gnu and a (cc) side
> > > > by side with a 'tick' over each to show we approve of both.
> > > >
> > > > So this would mean we are 'outwardsly compatible' ie. anyone could use
> > > > our content under a CC/FSF license. I mean we want to ensure as many
> > > > people as possible get to use free software (right?), so lets not
> > > > inhibit that aim by being caught up in these license stand offs.
> > > >
> > > > To preserve the floss manuals content we might then make a copy of all
> > > > floss manuals material periodically and keep it on our servers and use
> > > > the GPL to cover it. This means it is free forever.
> > > >   
> > > 
> > > Well, there are some pros and cons here. The pro, as you mention, is 
> > > that more licenses means more reuse. The two cons, though, are:
> > > 
> > > 1) Multi-licensing has the inherent pitfall that if some downstream 
> > > reuser chooses to use the content under only one of the licenses and not 
> > > multi-license their edits, their modified version can't be reintegrated 
> > > into the original multi-licensed version. For example, if someone took a 
> > > work-in-progress manual, imported it into Wikibooks under the GFDL, and 
> > > polished it up to a nice work, the improvements couldn't be reintegrated 
> > > back into flossmanuals unless flossmanuals were willing to use just the 
> > > GFDL for that manual.
> > > 
> > > 2) If there are non-copyleft licenses as options among the multiple 
> > > licenses, then a downstream reuser can basically "take it proprietary", 
> > > refusing to freely license their modified version of the manual. For 
> > > example, a company could use a flossmanuals manual under cc-by as the 
> > > basis for a commercial manual, and keep their improvements proprietary, 
> > > since the only thing cc-by requires is that they credit the original 
> > > authors, not that they freely license their own contributions too 
> > > (cc-by-sa adds that requirement).
> > > 
> > > A strategy that would avoid #2 (but not #1) would be to multi-license 
> > > under only copyleft licenses, probably GPL, GFDL, and cc-by-sa. For what 
> > > it's worth, Wikimedia Commons' suggested license for users uploading 
> > > their own media is similar: dual-licensed under GFDL and cc-by-sa 
> > > (probably only missing GPL because nobody realizes it can apply to 
> > > non-code).
> > > 
> > > -Mark
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> > > http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> > -- 
> > 
> > 
> > adam hyde
> > floss manuals
> > 
> > free manuals for free software
> > http://www.flossmanuals.net
> > 
> > mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
> > email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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-- 

adam hyde
floss manuals

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http://www.flossmanuals.net

mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
email : adam at flossmanuals.net